By: George Garneau
WITHOUT NEW SUPPLIES of newsprint, the two remaining dailies in Sarajevo, Bosnia, will close within weeks, the Paris-based International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ) said July 13.
FIEJ has begun an emergency appeal for newsprint to keep the papers alive.
"The end of the siege of Sarajevo has also meant the drying up of aid to the press," FIEJ director general Timothy Balding said.
"It would be a tragedy if, after surviving so heroically through the siege, they now had to go out of business," he added.
Sead Demirovic, editor in chief of the Sarajevo daily Vecernje Novine and president of the local publishers' group, said the city's papers survived two years of war only with international support, "but now that the siege of Sarajevo has ended, it is almost impossible to find any donors."
Even Oslobodjenje, the daily that miraculously published without interruption despite five staffers being killed and 25 being injured during the seige, is seeing its support dry up as attention shifts to the area's electronic media.
"Oslobodjenje has now run out of support and solidarity," said Zlatko Dizdarevic of Oslobodjenje.
Both dailies have cut their circulation to under 10% of pre-war levels. Other Bosnian papers have closed.
Balding said the dailies need 500 tons of newsprint to make it through the year.
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